[John P.O.V.]
"Get back here, you overgrown walnut!"
I slammed on the Pepsi-Chaser's throttle, the carbonated engine screaming in protest as I tore through the unstable dimensional veil that Angstrom Levy had just escaped through. The dimensional tunnel warped around me, a nauseating blender of reality, shifting colors and displaced gravity.
FLASH!
I burst out of the portal, my right leg already extended, entirely prepared to drop a finishing kick squarely onto his giant forehead.
Instead, I flew straight into the apocalypse.
"What the—"
I was mid-air, hundreds of feet above a massive, sprawling metropolis. But the sky wasn't blue. It wasn't even a sky anymore. It was a blinding, apocalyptic white. The deafening, soul-rattling roar of a nuclear detonation ripped through the atmosphere with a sound so loud it bypassed my eardrums and vibrated directly into my bones.
Above me, a massive mushroom cloud was already blooming in the very center of the city's skyspace, sending a shockwave of atomic fire, vaporized concrete, and lethal radiation expanding outward at supersonic speeds.
My eyes rapidly adjusted to the blinding light, filtering through the thermal radiation. Down below, on the pavement of what looked like a subterranean submarine facility, I saw a sight that made my heart drop straight into my stomach.
Superman.
He was on his knees in the rubble, wearing his iconic blue and red suit, holding the lifeless body of Lois Lane with a gaping hole in her stomach.
Standing a few feet away, entirely unbothered by the impending wall of nuclear fire rushing toward them, the Joker and Harley Quinn were cackling in maniacal glee.
Just outside the blast radius I saw a Batwing flying in at supersonic speeds.
Time seemed to slow down as I analysed the situation and collected the clues.
'Wait! This seems so familiar: a dead Lois Lane and an impending Nuclear blast on Metropolis, then that means…. Oh hell no. Not on my watch.'
I jumped off the Pepsi-Chaser and went into a dead free-fall directly into the expanding nuclear blast.
I tapped deep into my soul, pulling upon one of my most busted passive traits.
Glowing One
The moment the atomic fire hit my armour, my suit acted like a multiversal lightning rod.
The lethal radiation, the thermal energy, the sheer kinetic force of the five-megaton nuclear blast, all of it was magnetically sucked into my body. The expanding dome of death halted in its tracks, swirling into a massive vortex of fire that funneled directly down into the bubbling translucent dome on my chest piece.
THOOOOOM!
I hit the ground with a localized shockwave of my own, the concrete cratering beneath my boots. I vented a titanic cloud of glowing, red radioactive steam from my shoulder exhausts.
The entire nuclear yield of the Metropolis Bomb had just been reduced to a spicy, overcharged battery for my already taxing form. The city's sky scrappers were still damaged by the initial concussive force, but the radiation and the firestorm?
'Itadakimasu.'
"Who... what are you?" Batman whispered, suddenly appearing behind me.
I nearly jumped from the surprise but quickly calmed myself when I saw his body still shaking, must be from realising what was about to happen if I hadn't intervened.
Superman didn't look up. He didn't care that the nuke had vanished.
He…He was weeping?
His broad, god-like shoulders shook violently as he clutched Lois's corpse. The realization of what he had been tricked into doing—that the Kryptonite-laced fear toxin had made him think Lois was Doomsday, that he was the one who flew her into space, that he triggered the bomb—was visibly breaking his mind.
"Lois... Lois, no... please, no..." Clark choked out, his voice cracking with a level of grief that made the air feel heavy.
"Awww, look at the big blue boy scout cry! Now that's a joke that really landed, eh, Batsy?!" The Joker wheezed, slapping his knee and laughing so hard he doubled over. "He killed her! He actually did it! Oh, this is my best material yet!"
Harley giggled maniacally beside him, twirling her mallet, completely ignoring me, a literal shining knight standing in a crater of his own making.
I slowly stood up, my armor humming with a terrifying amount of absorbed atomic energy.
'The Injustice Universe huh? Well, maybe it's not too late to save this mess.'
I recognized the story instantly. This was one of the most depressing and well-known timelines in DC history. Wherein Superman snaps, brutally murders the Joker, and spends the next five years turning into a global fascist dictator who laser-visions teenagers in the face.
'My Favourite hero, turning away from the symbol of hope?'
"Yeah, no. Not if I can help it," I muttered.
I walked up to Superman while the Dark Knight was busy dealing with the Lunatic couple. The Man of Steel barely registered my presence. To him, I was just background noise to his shattered world.
I raised my right hand, hovering it over Lois Lane's lifeless body, and activated one of my most expensive abilities.
Greedy Healing
The rules of the skill were absolute. I could cheat death itself, but the universe demanded its pound of flesh in wealth.
A blinding, ethereal golden aura erupted from my gauntlet as a literal waterfall of shimmering, divine liquid light that washed over Lois Lane's body.
The gaping hole was slowly mended into a stomach, while the surgical wound in her chest, where the Joker had wired the detonator, knitted together flawlessly without a single scar. The fatal traces of Fear Toxin vanished from her bloodstream as the cold pallor of death was replaced by the warm flush of life.
As the healing was going on I could hear Nakime's panicked voice via our connection.
'Master! Are you alright? Where are you? Why did more than Seven Hundred tons of gold vanish so rapidly?'
'Nothing to worry Nakime, just trying to perform a resurrection.'
'Ressurr…. What?' Nakime said in surprise.
'You said hundreds of tons?! What is that, a hundred billion dollars?! For a normal human?! Thank RNGesus that Chaos Corp. is doing so well, what kind of Inflation is this...'
I stopped mid-complaint as I heard two pairs of heartbeats as I realised.
'Of course, how could I forget; she was pregnant with a half Kryptonian baby. No wonder the cost was so high.'
Thump-thump.
Superman froze.
The Man of Steel's super-hearing picked it up before anything else in the universe. His head snapped down so fast it created a micro-vacuum. His red, tear-filled eyes locked onto Lois's chest. He heard the steady, rhythmic beating of her heart.
And then, a second, fainter heartbeat right beneath it.
"GASP!"
Lois Lane's eyes shot open. She took a massive, shuddering breath, arching her back as her lungs filled with air, her hands flying to her completely healed chest.
"Lois...?" Clark whispered. His voice was trembling so hard it vibrated the concrete debris around us.
He pulled her against his chest, burying his face in her neck, sobbing uncontrollably. The tension in his muscles, the dark, murderous aura that had been building to shatter the world, completely evaporated. "You're... you're alive? The baby...?"
"I'm okay, Clark," she coughed, deeply confused but clinging tightly to his cape. "I'm okay. What happened? What's going on?"
"Hey! No fair! Objection!"
The Joker whined, stomping his foot and pouting dramatically. He pulled out a magnum revolver and clicked the hammer back. "Your involvement completely ruins the punchline! Guess I'll just have to shoot her the old-fash—"
ZAP!
I didn't warn him or give him a chance to pull a gag flag out of the barrel.
I casually raised my left arm, didn't even look in his direction, and fired a small dagger made of energy using my BladeMaster ability.
The blade curved and took the Joker and Harley Quinn's heads completely off their shoulders before their brains could even register the flash of light. Their headless bodies stood frozen for a second before dropping to the concrete like sacks of rotten potatoes.
"NO!"
I looked to my side to see Batman screaming.
The Dark Knight whipped out three explosive Batarangs, his heavy cape flaring out like bat wings as he dropped into a low, aggressive combat stance. He glared at me with fury I could not understand.
"We don't kill! You crossed the line!" Batman roared, his voice rough as sandpaper.
Superman slowly looked up from Lois and finally noticed his surroundings.
He stared at the surprisingly unscathed city, the giant crater where I had landed, then at Batman and finally saw Joker's headless corpse.
His face was a complex, swirling mask of shock, horror, and terrifyingly quiet relief. He had been seconds away from punching a hole straight through the clown's chest himself but seeing a stranger do it so casually, so efficiently, completely derailed his murderous urge.
"Shut up, Bruce," I retorted, finally turning to face the Dark Knight and pointing a finger at his chest.
Batman flinched visibly.
'How did he know my name?' was written all over his face.
"I just ate a five-megaton nuclear warhead for breakfast and spent a hundred billion dollars to resurrect your best friend's wife and unborn baby. Not to mention I just stopped him from turning into a murderous global dictator who would have eventually broken your back," I said, my synthesized voice dripping with disdain.
"You let that clown live for years. You let him pile up thousands of bodies. You let him beat Jason Todd to death with a crowbar, and you still put him in a revolving-door asylum. Take your self-righteous 'One Bad Day' philosophy and shove it deep in the Batcave. I'm not from your universe, so I don't need to play by your broken rules."
Batman gritted his teeth, his grip tightening on the Batarangs until his knuckles turned white beneath the Kevlar. "Who do you work for? Give me a name!"
"Stay refreshed!" I gave him a crisp, two-finger salute while pointing at the bigass Pepsi logo on my chest.
Ship's driver pinged loudly. It had picked up Angstrom Levy's dimensional trail re-opening in the dimensional void.
He was moving again!
"Ship, wheels!"
I summoned the Pepsi-Chaser and it came revving to a deafening roar. I popped the clutch and tore through the newly formed red and blue portal, leaving the utterly speechless child slaver staring at my exhaust fumes.
[A/N]:
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